


Boxing Day

by TerrusDacktellus



Series: Lost Continent [4]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Buffy the Vampire Slayer (Comics)
Genre: Comics, F/M, Spuffy, more sappy Christmas fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-27
Updated: 2015-12-27
Packaged: 2018-05-09 16:03:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,014
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5546477
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TerrusDacktellus/pseuds/TerrusDacktellus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Spike and Giles are dead set on watching the Boxing Day match and for some reason, they insist on doing it in Buffy's apartment.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Boxing Day

**Author's Note:**

> Set in season 10, the day after Comfort and Joy, the previous story in this series. It would probably help if you read that first.
> 
> Written for my promptathon on Tumblr for the prompt "Giles and Spike watching a Liverpool/Man U game together while rooting for opposite teams" from hcconn.

“Shhh!”

“You shhh!”

Buffy stirred in her bed, the hissed whispers disturbing her morning dreams. The noise quieted and she stilled until a loud crash and a yelped expletive startled her awake. She sat bolt up right, heart thudding, as the muffled sounds of an argument drifted in from the living room. 

“I told you this was a bad idea!”

“And I told you it’d be bloody fine if we just kept bloody quiet, y’clodhopping nit, but no, you have to go charging about the place like a bloody bull elephant —”

“Guys!” 

Buffy peered blearily around the door to find Spike and Giles in mid-argument, surrounded by Christmas detritus, including a stack of opening presents that Giles appeared to have stubbed his toe on. They froze and gave her surprisingly similar guilty stares. 

“What are you doing?” she asked groggily. They shuffled their feet, seeming to be using some kind of universal, male telepathy to decide who should explain things, which was far too much for Buffy’s aching head. “Guys! Five words or less.”

“Wanted to watch the match,” mumbled Spike eventually. 

“What match?” she demanded, then decided she didn’t care. “Never mind. Why the hell did you come in here to watch it?!”

Giles glared at Spike, then kicked him solidly on the ankle, once it became apparent he wasn’t going to answer. 

“Your telly’s bigger,” he said, shooting Giles a venomous look. “And no matter what short arse here says, it was not all my idea, I never forced him to come, the poxy —”

“Spike!” snapped Buffy, then clutched her head. Okay. Indoor voices only. “Just — if I say yes, will you be quiet and let me go back to sleep?”

Spike and Giles exchanged a look that quite clearly indicated they couldn’t believe they’d gotten away with it. Had she been slightly less hungover, it might have been cute. As it was, Buffy just stumbled back to bed feeling slightly nauseated and crashed. 

* * *

She couldn’t really say if she actually went back to sleep. Mostly she just lay as still as she could, her body aching from a cataclysmic combination of excess food, alcohol and sleep deprivation. Apparently not even slayer healing could save her from a Christmas hangover. 

Eventually the increasing pressure on her bladder and the unsuccessfully stifled sounds of gloating and lamenting from the living room drove her out of bed. One urgent need taken care of, she headed to the kitchen and poured herself a large glass of juice, operating on autopilot. She took a drink and winced as her deadened tastebuds reawakened and reminded her that her mouth tasted terrible. 

“Bleh,” she said grumpily. Giles hissed in excitement and Spike groaned, interrupting her self pity train. She drifted over to watch and Spike dragged his eyes from the screen to look at her. Judging by his grin, she looked as bad as she felt.

“Mornin’ sunshine,” he said brightly. 

“Remind me again why I’ve never staked you,” she muttered. Bed was so far away. After contemplating the long walk back to her room for a moment, Buffy gave up and flopped on the couch between Spike and Giles. Giles barely even looked away from the match but Spike glanced at her in obvious surprise. Too late, Buffy remembered the weird closeness of the day before. Was he going to take this as some kind of sign? Christmas was Christmas, the time of miracles and Get Out of Jail Free cards for inappropriately suggestive mistletoe kisses. It didn’t count. He knew that, right? 

“Oh, come on, offside, you blind twat!” he roared suddenly and Buffy cringed back into the cushions, clutching her head and wondering why she’d worried. She dozed for a while, focusing dreamily on the screen, because watching the little guys running around on the pitch was far more appealing than listening to the ominous swishing and gurgling coming from her stomach. 

“It’s not like American football,” she observed after a while. 

“No, there’s actual skill involved,” said Spike, then sniggered at his own wit. 

“Really?” said Giles, as one of the players in red tripped over the ball. “You’re calling that skill?”

Spike abruptly stopped laughing. 

“Are they supposed to do that?” asked Buffy.

“No,” he said sourly. She finally noticed that he was wearing a faded, red jersey that she’d never seen before: it looked terrible with his pale complexion and a giggle escaped her before she could contain it. He eyed her suspiciously. 

“So who’s playing?” she asked, partly to divert his attention and partly because she couldn’t make head or tail of the abbreviations in the upper corner of the screen. 

“Man U ’n’ Liverpool.” Spike was leaning forward in an attitude of extreme concentration, as though he could push the ball down the field by sheer force of will. He inhaled sharply as one of the red guys took off with the ball seemingly glued to his foot, weaving in and out of the other players. 

“Yeah, yeah, come on!” 

An intrusive thought suggested to Buffy that Spike’s half-hushed, throaty cheering sounded not unlike his sex voice. No, no, she scolded herself. Bad Buffy. Just concentrate on the silly grown men chasing after a piece of leather. Mr Glue-Shoes lost the ball and Spike sank back into the couch with a moan of frustration. 

“Rooney’s lost it,” said Giles gleefully. 

“’S'just a bad season,” Spike insisted. 

“It’s just three bad seasons in a row.”

“He’s findin’ his feet. The whole team’s inna soddin’ shambles since Fergy left.” Spike sounded distinctly desperate. 

“Has-beens, the lot of them!” 

Liverpool chose that moment to score and Giles let out a childish giggle that tugged at Buffy strangely. It hurt, seeing the man who’d been the closest thing she had to a father reduced to a child, and yet the innocent happiness in his laugh warmed her to the extent that the seesawing in her heart was starting to make her feel sea sick. Or maybe that was just the astronomic quantities of egg nog she’d drunk yesterday. Damn Andrew and his liberal use of rum.

“What are you guys doing up?” 

The sound of Dawn’s voice interrupted Buffy’s train of thought, which had been getting far too deep for this hour of the morning anyway. She shifted over as Dawn flopped between her and Giles, wiggling and shoving to create more room, until her face ended up squashed against the hard wall of Spike’s shoulder and her nose was abruptly filled with the evocative scent of Old Spice, soap and cigarettes. Buffy inhaled reflexively, then realised she was being a creep. She pulled away hastily. On her other side, Dawn yawned hugely.

“You guys woke me up,” she said, a hint of that old teenage whine in her voice. “For a soccer match.” 

“Football,” corrected Giles pedantically. 

“Whatever. What’s so important about a stupid soccer match?”

Spike and Giles shared one of those ‘can you believe these horrible, cultureless colonials’ looks that were really annoying when Buffy was slightly more awake. 

“It’s a Boxing Day tradition,” said Spike, looking pained. Buffy frowned in confusion. 

“Then why aren’t we watching boxing?” she asked and he let out a faint groan of despair. 

“Boxing Day refers to an English tradition whereby rich families would present their servants and various tradesmen with boxes filled with Christmas gifts, usually old clothes, leftover food, money …” 

The timbre of Giles’ lecture voice was as achingly familiar as it was mind-numbingly boring. Buffy closed her eyes and let it wash over her as her head drooped onto Spike’s shoulder. Just for five minutes, she told herself and fell fast asleep. 

* * *

“Honestly, Gary, United were plain lucky. That last goal was a fluke and I’m saying right here, right now, this should’ve been Liverpool’s game.”

This time it was the TV pundits that woke her. Buffy lifted her head from Spike’s shoulder — which someone appeared to have drooled on, whoops — and peered around for Dawn and Giles, her eyes fuzzy and slow to focus.

“Is the match over already then?” 

Spike nodded. 

“We drew,” he told her, although she hadn’t asked and didn’t particularly care. “Beautiful cross from Depay in extra time. Liverpool called offside, but that’s complete shite, he was well on.” 

“Oh right,” said Buffy, trying to sound like she knew what any of that meant. Spike turned his head a little to look at her, the corner of his mouth curving into a smile. Not fooled then. She stretched and looked around, feeling a little more awake. Giles and Dawn were in the kitchen, chatting as they baked something, both covered in flour. She felt that little tug on her heart again: it was good to see her family happy. She glanced at Spike and saw to her surprise that he was looking in the same direction as she was, his eyes soft. Something that had been niggling in the back of her mind all morning clicked. 

“Your TV is way bigger than ours,” she said slowly and Spike froze. 

“Dunno what you mean,” he said, hunching his shoulders and looking shiftily away. 

“And you have HD!” Buffy glared at him meaningfully, then prodded him in the ribs when he deliberately avoided her eyes. “C’mon Spike, what’s this about?” 

“Di’n’t want the li’l’ git over at our place, crampin’ our style,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck. “Got important adult things to do, y’know. Not fit for a child’s eyes.” 

“Spike, do not tell me you weren’t going to spend today watching soap operas in your underwear and playing with the kittens.”

“You left out the boozing and smoking. Would hate to stunt his growth.”

“Spike.” She said his name with an unintentional weight and it hung in the air between them. He looked at her, his mouth quirked into a half smile, his eyes very soft and a little sheepish and she felt a pulse in her chest, like the tug she had felt earlier, but deeper, slower, stranger. It was there and gone again before she could catch it, but it made her breath stutter in surprise and for no reason at all she was suddenly ridiculously conscious of her rumpled PJs and tousled bed hair.

“He wouldn’t’ve come if I’d asked him over to ours,” said Spike quietly. He turned back to watch Dawn smear flour all over Giles’ face under the pretext of wiping it off and snorted. “An’ it would’ve been awkward as fuck if I went over to his. The Boxing Day match, it’s a big thing back home, yeah? I couldn’t —”

He broke off, doing the hunched-shoulders-ducked-head thing which was the vampire equivalent of blushing and an insane thought occurred. 

“You didn’t want him to be alone.”

Spike gave a jerky, little, one-shoulder shrug. “You said it, not me.” 

He wasn’t denying it. Buffy sat there, momentarily gobsmacked. First the Christmas present and now this?

“I didn’t know you two were such good pals these days,” she said at last.

“We, ah, had a chat yesterday. Buried the hatchet a bit.” 

Buffy just arched an eyebrow incredulously. 

“It was a weird day all round,” he said and she caught the hint. He hadn’t forgotten. Her heart throbbed again with a vengeance. 

“Yeah, well. The magic of Christmas, right?” she said, then winced internally at how dismissive that sounded. She was so painfully at a loss for what to say. 

“Yeah.” He avoided her eyes again, perhaps hurt or maybe just embarrassed. Some days she missed face-like-an-open-book Spike. Impulsively, she reached out and grabbed his hand. 

“Thank you,” she said. “For caring about him.”

Before he could respond, Giles and Dawn came back in, proudly showing off their breakfast cookies — “Buffy, they’ve got fruit and oatmeal in them, they’re practically muesli” — and Buffy dropped his hand hastily. But the memory of the cool, smoothness of his skin lingered at her fingertips and as they ate, she caught him, out of the corner of her eye, raising his knuckles briefly to his lips, as if to kiss where she had been.

**Author's Note:**

> Very evidently, I don't know much about soccer and I'm afraid I didn't do a lot of research because I amn't terribly interested in it. If there are any glaring anachronisms in this, just assume that it's in the same vague, nebulous time stream as the comics themselves.


End file.
